The Retail Intelligence Blog

Outprice, Outsell and Outperform your competition!

About Mark Stiving, Guest Contributor

Mark Stiving is a San Jose, Calif.-based pricing expert with 15 years' experience speaking, writing, coaching and consulting to help firms increase profits through value-based pricing. He is the author of Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits; he blogs at PragmaticPricing.com and shares pithy thoughts on Twitter using @MarkStiving.

“Can a retailer “cooperate” with his/her competitors so both succeed and make greater profits?” This is the question posed and discussed by Pragmatic Marketing expert Mark Stiving in his recent article, Pricing and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The prisoner’s dilemma (which originated in game theory) represents a situation where two players both do bet... Read More |
Comments Off on Why Keeping Your Retail Competitors in Business Keeps YOUR Profits High

In line with recent blog posts about competitor pricing and customer buying psychology, here’s another interesting observation, from a study entitled: The Effects of Consumers’ Price Expectations on Sellers’ Dynamic Pricing Strategies. In this research paper in the American Marketing Association’s Journal of Marketing Research, authors Hong Yuan (... Read More |
Comments Off on How Retail Price Vs. Customer Expectation Triggers Buying – Or Bolting To Check Competitor Pricing

“Free” has many different meanings, and it is used in many different contexts, but free has a lot of weight when it is used in marketing. In an interesting book called Free: The Future of A Radical Price, best-selling author and Wired Editor-in-Chief, Chris Anderson, posits that consumers behave extremely differently to get a free product than th... Read More |
Comments Off on 4 Ways Giving Consumers Something That’s Genuinely Free Can Help Retailers Profit In The Long Run

Think of price as a value scorecard. Price turns perceived value into revenue. The more value you create and communicate, the higher the score. So how much can you charge for your product? You have to determine how much your competitor charges — AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY — how does your product differ from your competitor’s? (Think competitive price m... Read More |
Comments Off on How Competitive Pricing & Marketing Helps Turn Perceived Value Into Revenue

Your competitive pricing environment is changing around you. Are your prices keeping up with market conditions? When it comes to maintaining your prices, you have 4 choices: Ignore, react, respond, and pre-act. Ignoring is used too often as the default price maintenance methodology. Reacting is using the ignoring strategy, until the consequences ar... Read More |
Comments Off on Vision Is The Secret To Competitive Pricing Success

When it comes to competitive pricing, value-based pricing maximizes your profits. At its simplest this means charge what your customers are willing to Pay (WTP). When you have the ability to charge different prices to different customers, charge more to the ones with higher WTP. We’ve discussed this as price segmentation in recent articles. What... Read More |
Comments Off on Should Retailers Price for Loyalty or Price By Willingness to Pay? The Contradiction

Last month, we discussed price segmentation and how to charge different customers different prices based on customer characteristics, their behaviors, and transaction characteristics. These are all techniques on how to charge different prices for the same product. This month, let’s look at the most powerful price segmentation tool of all, your pr... Read More |
Comments Off on Price Segmentation Yields More Profit At High End

You know you can make more money when you can charge different prices to different customers. This is price segmentation as discussed in my previous blog post, “How To Use Price Segmentation To Maximize Retail Profits.” The ultimate goal is to charge each customer whatever he or she is willing to pay. Of course this isn’t always possible, but he... Read More |
Comments Off on 4 Proven Techniques Using Price Segmentation To Maximize Profits

No two customers have the exact same Willingness to Pay (WTP) — and your objective should be to capture as much of each of your customer’s WTP as possible, while still winning the business. So do you charge different prices to different customers??? I hope so!!! (This isprice segmentation). Imagine two customers, Mr. Rich and Mr. Mid... Read More |
Comments Off on How To Use Price Segmentation To Maximize Retail Profits

While setting prices we must put ourselves in the shoes of our customers. How do they make decisions? How can we help them decide to purchase from us? With almost every purchase, your customers make two decisions: Will I? And Which One? Will I buy something in this product category? If yes, then which one will I buy? “Which one?” includes both ... Read More |
Comments Off on Will I? Which One? 2 Important Buying Decisions Impacting Your Competitive Pricing